Filed 7/6/26 Justice West v. Wong CA2/8
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION EIGHT

JUSTICE WEST, INC., B345490

Plaintiff and Appellant, Los Angeles County
Super. Ct. No. 24STCV05064
v.

LISA WONG,

Defendant and Respondent.

APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los
Angeles County, Thomas D. Long, Judge. Affirmed.
Law Office of Ami Meyers and Ami Meyers for Plaintiff and
Appellant.
TQM Law, Alon HaCohen; Jeff Lewis Law, Jeffrey Lewis,
Kyla Dayton and Tim Cotter for Defendant and Respondent.

_________________________
 This civil action is the fallout from a property sale that
occurred following court orders in an earlier divorce proceeding.
Plaintiff and appellant Justice West, Inc. views the sale as
improper and seeks relief stemming from it. Defendant and
respondent Lisa Wong contends Justice West has sued her
because of her litigation conduct in the divorce proceeding, and
she contends, furthermore, that the litigation privilege bars
Justice West’s suit. Wong, therefore, views Justice West’s
lawsuit as susceptible to a motion to strike under California’s
statute limiting “SLAPPs” (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public
Participation), which calls for early dismissal of meritless
lawsuits if they arise from a defendant’s acts in furtherance of
petitioning or free speech rights. (See Code Civ. Proc., § 425.16,
subd. (b)(1).) (Further undesignated statutory references are to
the Code of Civil Procedure.) The trial court agreed with Wong
and accordingly granted her motion to strike under the anti-
SLAPP statute. Justice West appealed. We affirm.
I.
Divorce proceedings for Wong and Boschal Lee, Wong’s ex-
husband, lasted from 2014 to 2018. A company called Mitchell
and Company, Inc. (MITCO) and real property located at West
Grand Avenue, Alhambra, California (the Grand property) are
particularly relevant to our understanding of those proceedings
and this lawsuit. MITCO was not a party to the divorce
proceedings, but Wong and Lee were its shareholders and Wong
was its president. Ownership of the Grand property was an issue
in the divorce. The family court, when assessing the marital
assets, found Wong and Lee were MITCO’s sole owners and
MITCO was the legal owner of the Grand property.

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 On September 19, 2018, the family court ordered the Grand
property “be offered for sale and sold for the fair market value as
soon as a willing buyer [could] be found” with net proceeds to be
divided consistent with certain equalization distributions. The
court found “[t]he evidence established” the value of the Grand
property to be $850,000. It ordered that, out of the proceeds of
the property sale, Wong receive the greater of “$425,000 or half of
the net proceeds,” equalization payments totaling an additional
$452,629.80 that included $104,681 for her attorney fees and
costs, and a separate award for fees or costs related to certain
quitclaim deeds.
In a later, February 4, 2019 order, the family court gave
these further directives: “Petitioner, Lisa Wong, shall have
exclusive authorization to list, sell and transfer [the Grand
property]. In so doing, Lisa Wong, shall be allowed to sign any
and all documents necessary to list, sell or transfer said property
on behalf of herself, Boschal Lee and/or Mitchell and Company[.]
[¶] . . . [¶] Petitioner, Lisa Wong, shall have the right to collect
rents paid by both tenants leasing [the Grand property] until
such time as the property is sold. [¶] The Clerk of the Court or
Clerk’s Designee is appointed elisor on behalf of Katnchalee
Peraban, as an officer of Mitchell and Company, Inc. to execute a
Grant Deed transferring [the Grand property] from Mitchell and
Company Inc., a Nevada Corporation to Lisa Wong, a single
woman and Boschal Lee a single man, as tenants in common.”
The court’s directives were followed. A grant deed
transferring ownership of the Grand property to Wong and Lee
was executed in February 2019, and Wong sold the property to a
third party for $870,000 in May 2019.

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 Nearly five years later, on February 29, 2024, Justice West,
an assignee of MITCO, filed a complaint against Wong based on
the sale. It alleged causes of action for conversion, interference
with economic advantage, intentional interference with
contractual relations, fraudulent transfer, aiding and abetting
fraudulent transfer, breach of fiduciary duty, aiding and abetting
breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy, accounting, unjust
enrichment, declaratory relief, and civil RICO. Justice West
alleged Wong had “used fraud to transfer title” to and “acquire for
herself” the Grand property, then “perpetrated a second
fraudulent transfer” in selling Grand “without MITCO’s consent
for below market value” and “ke[eping] all sale proceeds for
herself.” Justice West alleged Wong obtained unwarranted
benefits from the sale of the Grand property by lying under oath
in the divorce proceeding and purposefully excluding MITCO as a
party.
Wong filed a special motion to strike Justice West’s
complaint under the anti-SLAPP statute, section 425.16,
asserting Justice West’s claims arose entirely from Wong’s
protected litigation activity and lacked merit for a host of
reasons.
In a February 20, 2025 order, the trial court granted
Wong’s motion, agreeing Justice West’s allegations arose entirely
from Wong’s protected litigation activity and the litigation
privilege barred Justice West’s claims. Justice West timely
appealed.
II.
“An order granting or denying a special motion to strike
shall be appealable.” (§ 425.16, subd. (i); § 904.1, subd (a)(13).)
We review de novo a ruling on a special motion to strike

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under section 425.16, and we apply the same analytical
framework a trial court would apply. (Balla v. Hall (2021)
59 Cal.App.5th 652, 671.)
“In evaluating an anti-SLAPP motion, courts conduct a
two-step analysis. First, the court decides whether a defendant
has met its ‘burden of establishing that the challenged
allegations or claims “aris[e] from” protected activity in which the
defendant has engaged.’ ” (Manlin v. Milner (2022)
82 Cal.App.5th 1004, 1017−1018 (Manlin).) “For these purposes,
protected activity ‘includes: (1) any written or oral statement or
writing made before a legislative, executive, or judicial
proceeding, or any other official proceeding authorized by law[;]
(2) any written or oral statement or writing made in connection
with an issue under consideration or review by a legislative,
executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding
authorized by law[;] (3) any written or oral statement or writing
made in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection
with an issue of public interest[;] or (4) any other conduct in
furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition
or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a
public issue or an issue of public interest.’ (§ 425.16, subd. (e).)”
(Manlin, at p. 1018.)
“Second, if a defendant meets its burden on the threshold
showing, the court decides if the plaintiff ‘has established that
there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim.’
(§ 425.16, subd. (b)(1).)” (Manlin, supra, 82 Cal.App.5th at
p. 1018.) “To satisfy this burden, the plaintiff ‘ “must
demonstrate that the complaint is both legally sufficient and
supported by a sufficient prima facie showing of facts to sustain a
favorable judgment if the evidence submitted by the plaintiff is

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credited.” ’ ” (Ibid.) Courts on appeal must analyze “ ‘each act or
set of acts supplying a basis for relief, of which there may be
several in a single pleaded cause of action — to determine
whether the acts are protected and, if so, whether the claim they
give rise to has the requisite degree of merit to survive the
motion.’ ” (Ibid.) “ ‘[T]o the extent any acts are unprotected, the
claims based on those acts will survive.’ ” (Ibid.)
A.
Wong has established Justice West’s causes of action arise
from protected activity.
Courts have adopted “a fairly expansive view of what
constitutes litigation-related activities within the scope of section
425.16.” (Kashian v. Harriman (2002) 98 Cal.App.4th 892,
908.) “[S]tatements, writings and pleadings in connection with
civil litigation are covered by the anti-SLAPP statute.” (Rohde v.
Wolf (2007) 154 Cal.App.4th 28, 35.) Non-communicative acts
can be, too. (See, e.g., O’Neil-Rosales v. Citibank (South Dakota)
N.A. (2017) 11 Cal.App.5th Supp. 1, 6 [“obtaining an abstract of
judgment and recording it as a real property lien”].) In
particular, actions taken to enforce a judgment are actions in
furtherance of one’s petitioning rights. (Weeden v. Hoffman
(2021) 70 Cal.App.5th 269, 285, fn. 3 (Weeden); cf. Rusheen v.
Cohen (2006) 37 Cal.4th 1048, 1051, 1056 (Rusheen) [noting a
“ ‘cause of action “arising from” defendant’s litigation activity
may appropriately be the subject of a section 425.16 motion to
strike’ ” and concluding “actions taken to collect a judgment, such
as obtaining a writ of execution and levying on a judgment
debtor’s property” were protected by the litigation
privilege].) “Undeniably, . . . enforcement proceedings are an
extension of the judicial process and are related to the realization

6
of a litigation objective.” (Brown v. Kennard (2001)
94 Cal.App.4th 40, 49.)
Justice West’s key allegations, which underlie all 12 of its
causes of action, are that Wong, during the family dissolution
matter, harmed and breached a duty to MITCO when she (1)
“fraudulently” transferred title and ownership of the Grand
property from MITCO to herself, (2) sold the property “for an
amount significantly below market value,” (3) collected the rent
from the Grand property from February 2019 until its sale in
May 2019, and (4) paid her attorney from the proceeds of the
property.
The family court’s September 19, 2018, and February 4,
2019, orders directed each of these actions. That is, the court
ordered the Grand property deeded away from MITCO and to
Wong and Lee as tenants in common. It ordered Wong to sell the
property for market value, which the court determined to be
$850,000. It ordered Wong to collect rents. And it ordered Wong
one half of the sale proceeds plus extensive equalization
payments, including payments for her attorney fees.
Wong’s actions taken to enforce and comply with the family
court’s orders fall under the protections for petitioning activities
defined in section 425.16. (Weeden, supra, 70 Cal.App.5th at
p. 285, fn. 3.)
To the extent Justice West alleges Wong “lied under oath”
and “misrepresent[ed] facts” in the divorce case to secure transfer
of the Grand property, evidentiary submissions to a court fall
squarely within the ambit of protection the anti-SLAPP statute
affords. (§ 425.16, subd. (e)(1), (2).) While Justice West contends
these “lies” perpetrated an illegal fraud, a dispute over the
legality of assertedly protected conduct does not affect whether

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the anti-SLAPP statute applies. Our Supreme Court has created
only a narrow exception to the application of the anti-
SLAPP statute “where either the defendant concedes the
illegality of its conduct or the illegality is conclusively shown by
the evidence.” (Flatley v. Mauro (2006) 39 Cal.4th 299,
316.) That exception does not apply here, as Wong has not
conceded that her activity is illegal, nor has Justice West
produced evidence to conclusively establish illegality.
Our Supreme Court’s ruling in Rusheen is illustrative.
Though it chiefly addressed the litigation privilege, it ultimately
held the trial court had properly granted an anti-SLAPP
motion. (Rusheen, supra, 37 Cal.4th at p. 1065.) The litigation
privilege informs our analysis of whether acts fall under the anti-
SLAPP statute’s protection. (Neville v. Chudacoff (2008) 160
Cal.App.4th 1255, 1263 [the litigation privilege and the anti-
SLAPP statute “serve similar policy interests” and courts look to
privilege cases as an aid in addressing the first prong of the anti-
SLAPP analysis].) In Rusheen, the court held “where the cause of
action is based on a communicative act, the litigation privilege
extends to those noncommunicative actions which are necessarily
related to that communicative act.” (Rusheen, supra, 37 Cal.4th
at p. 1052.) Applying this rule, Rusheen concluded that, even
where the plaintiff alleged the defendant filed false declarations
of service to obtain a default judgment, and despite plaintiff’s
allegation that the defendant obtained the default without giving
proper notice, the litigation privilege extended to the defendant’s
post-judgment efforts to enforce the judgment, including applying
for a writ of execution and levying on the plaintiff’s property.
(Id. at pp. 1054, 1065; id. at p. 1065 [“the enforcement of the

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judgment in reliance on the filing of privileged declarations of
service was itself privileged”].)
The cases Justice West cites to counter this point are
unpersuasive. In Park v. Board of Trustees of California State
University (2017) 2 Cal.5th 1057, Park brought a discrimination
action against his employer, a university, alleging he was
unlawfully denied tenure because he was from Korea. The trial
court properly denied the university’s anti-SLAPP motion
because the lawsuit arose solely from the denial of tenure, which
was not an act in furtherance of the university’s free speech and
therefore not protected activity for anti-SLAPP purposes, even
though a deliberative tenure proceeding preceded the denial. (Id.
at pp. 1068, 1072.) In San Ramon Valley Fire Protection Dist. v.
Contra Costa County Employees’ Retirement Assn. (2004)
125 Cal.App.4th 343, a fire district challenged a county
retirement board’s decision to increase contributions payable by
the district and its employees. The trial court properly denied
the board’s anti-SLAPP motion, holding the board’s “collective
action” in demanding additional contributions did not implicate
its “rights of free speech or petition,” even though, as with Park,
the decision followed a deliberative proceeding. (Id. at p. 353.)
These cases are different from Rusheen and the case before us.
Neither involved a litigant’s litigation activity or conduct in
furtherance of litigation. Neither involved a plaintiff’s challenge
to a proceeding participant’s execution of a petitioned-for
decision; rather, each involved a plaintiff suing the decision-
maker.
Further, Greco v. Greco (2016) 2 Cal.App.5th 810 (Greco)
and Gaynor v. Bulen (2018) 19 Cal.App.5th 864 (Gaynor) are
inapposite. In Greco, a sister, the beneficiary of her deceased

9
parents’ trust and estates, sued her brother in a civil action for
elder abuse and in a probate action for breach of fiduciary duty,
constructive fraud, and conversion. (Greco, at p. 817.) The
beneficiary claimed in both actions that her brother, as trustee of
the deceased’s trust and administrator of their estates, filed
litigation against her in bad faith using trust and estate funds.
(Id. at pp. 816−817.) The brother responded with anti-SLAPP
motions, arguing his sister’s claims “arose from actions and
communications in the underlying litigation and therefore were
protected activity.” (Id. at p. 818.) The trial court denied the
brother’s motions and the appellate court affirmed as to all but
one cause of action, determining “it was [the brother’s]
withdrawal of the funds from the trust and estates that was the
alleged wrongful act,” not pursuit of wasteful litigation using
those funds. (Id. at p. 823.) While Justice West argues the
central acts of Greco and our case — the brother’s taking of trust
and estate funds and Wong’s transfer and sale of the Grand
property, respectively — are comparable, they are not. In Greco,
the brother acted of his own accord, while Wong acted after
petitioning the court and pursuant to a court order.
Gaynor is similar. That case, like Greco, concerned the
beneficiaries of a family trust, who sued a de facto trustee and co-
trustees for attempting to distribute trust funds unfairly and for
withdrawing trust assets to initiate and defend probate petitions
for their own benefit. (Gaynor, supra, 19 Cal.App.5th at pp. 869,
873−874.) The trustee defendants responded with an anti-
SLAPP motion, arguing the beneficiaries’ claims arose from
probate litigation activity. (Id. at p. 875.) The Court of Appeal
affirmed the trial court’s denial of the motion, concluding “it was
not the petitioning activity” of probate litigation that was at issue

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but the wasting of trust assets, which is not a protected activity.
(Id. at pp. 879−880.) As with Greco, the defendants in Gaynor
withdrew trust assets of their own volition for their own
purposes, not to comply with a petitioned-for court order. (See
Rusheen, supra, 37 Cal.4th at pp. 1062−1065; Weeden, supra,
70 Cal.App.5th at p. 285, fn. 3.)
In short, the anti-SLAPP statute covers Wong’s conduct
underlying Justice West’s claims.
B.
With the first prong of the anti-SLAPP statute satisfied, we
turn to the second.
“Once the court determines the first prong of the statute
has been met, a plaintiff must provide the court with
sufficient evidence to permit the court to determine whether
‘there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim.’
(§ 425.16, subd. (b)(1).)” (DuPont Merck Pharmaceutical Co. v.
Superior Court (2000) 78 Cal.App.4th 562, 568.) To satisfy
that burden, a plaintiff must show its claims have at least
“minimal merit.” (Navellier v. Sletten (2002) 29 Cal.4th 82, 89.)
We conclude Justice West fails to carry that burden because, like
the trial court, we conclude the litigation privilege applies.
Rusheen, discussed in the previous section, bars Justice
West’s claims arising from Wong’s judgment enforcement
activity. Justice West acknowledges Rusheen’s application of the
litigation privilege but argues against application of the privilege
here based on the nature of the divorce proceeding. Justice West
asserts Wong never had MITCO joined in the divorce action,
making it a “sham lawsuit” intended to facilitate the “illegal
taking” of the Grand property from MITCO, and making it
invalid as to MITCO or its assignee, Justice West.

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 From these starting points, Justice West initially argues
MITCO was an “indispensable party” to the divorce action under
section 389, and that its absence should, first, void the transfer of
the Grand property away from MITCO and, moreover, defeat
application of the litigation privilege. Justice West, however,
does not explain in its appellate briefing how the lack of an
indispensable party affects the litigation privilege. Although
Justice West’s briefing does not name the concept, Justice West
may be asserting the divorce action is tainted by “extrinsic fraud”
and that this creates an exception to the litigation privilege. (See
Silberg v. Anderson (1990) 50 Cal.3d 205, 214.) We deem Justice
West, however, to have forfeited any such argument based on
extrinsic fraud because not only did Justice West not develop the
argument in its briefing, it did not raise the argument before the
trial court. (Ables v. A. Ghazale Brothers, Inc. (2022) 74
Cal.App.5th 823, 829; see also Park v. Nazari (2023) 93
Cal.App.5th 1099, 1107 [“ ‘[T]he burden is on the moving party to
identify the specific claims based on protected activity that it
seeks to strike’ ”].) We also reject the argument on its merits.
“Extrinsic fraud occurs when a party is deprived of the
opportunity to present [a] claim or defense to the court; where [a
party] was kept ignorant or, other than from [its] own negligence,
fraudulently prevented from fully participating in the proceeding.
[Citation.] Examples of extrinsic fraud are: concealment of the
existence of a community property asset, failure to give notice of
the action to the other party, and convincing the other party not
to obtain counsel because the matter will not proceed (and then it
does proceed). [Citation.] The essence of extrinsic fraud is one
party’s preventing the other from having [its] day in court.” (City

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and County of San Francisco v. Cartagena (1995) 35 Cal.App.4th
1061, 1067.)
Even if Justice West could show extrinsic fraud, that would
not support its derivative tort action against Wong. Where a
judgment has been “ ‘procured by extrinsic fraud, the
normal remedy is to seek equitable relief from the judgment, not
to sue in tort,’ ” as the litigation privilege still precludes
derivative remedies. (Kuehn v. Kuehn (2000) 85 Cal.App.4th 824,
834; see Herterich v. Peltner (2018) 20 Cal.App.5th 1132, 1146–
1147 [same]; Home Ins. Co. v. Zurich Ins. Co. (2002)
96 Cal.App.4th 17, 26 [same].) Rusheen itself reiterated this
principle. (Rusheen, supra, 37 Cal.4th at pp. 1054, 1063–1065.)
Not only has Justice West’s appellate briefing failed to mention
extrinsic fraud at all, it has not proffered and supported with
argument a contention that the causes of action in its suit are
anything but derivative. MITCO, it should be noted, previously
filed a nearly identical lawsuit against Wong before allegedly
assigning its interests to Justice West in advance of this lawsuit.
The complaint in MITCO’s prior suit, which was dismissed after
MITCO failed to post an undertaking, mentioned extrinsic fraud
and included a separate cause of action for equitable relief. That
claim is absent from Justice West’s lawsuit.
All this aside, the divorce proceeding was not a “sham” so
as to defeat Wong’s invocation of the litigation privilege. The
cases Justice West cites to support its claim that a sham was
afoot — Chen v. Berenjian (2019) 33 Cal.App.5th 811 and
Aghaian v. Minassian (2020) 59 Cal.App.5th 447 — are
inapposite. As the trial court observed, both cases concerned
schemes challenged under the Uniform Voidable Transfers Act,
Civil Code section 3439.04, and each involved a collusive, sham

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lawsuit invented to render property harder to levy by outside
parties. (Chen, at pp. 815−822; Aghaian, at p. 456.) The trial
court correctly identified how this case differs from Chen and
Aghaian: “Here, there is no indication that the divorce
proceedings and subsequent enforcement of that judgment were
used as a fraudulent method of transferring property. Instead,
[Justice West] alleges [Wong] misrepresented facts and gave false
testimony during the (valid) dissolution litigation, inducing a void
judgment. [Wong]’s subsequent sale of the Grand Property was
an action taken to execute that judgment. [Wong]’s
communications and actions were therefore all undertaken in
judicial proceedings to further the litigation[.]”
We conclude Justice West has not carried its burden under
prong two of the anti-SLAPP statute, having failed to
demonstrate a probability of success on the merits of its claims
because of the litigation privilege.
DISPOSITION
We affirm the order granting Wong’s anti-SLAPP motion.
Wong may recover her costs on appeal.

SCHERB, J.

We concur:

STRATTON, P. J. VIRAMONTES, J.

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